Religion description of mattancherry synagogue
Answers
Explanation:
Rich history
Built in 1568 by Spanish-speaking Jews, the Paradesi synagogue is the oldest active Jewish place of worship in Kerala. The word paradesi means foreigner in Malayalam.
After the Portuguese persecution of the Jewish community in Cranganore (present-day Kodungallur) in the 16th century, the community sought refuge in Cochin, now Kochi. The Raja of Cochin gave them a piece of land next to his palace to build a place of worship, where the existing synagogue came up. Abraham Barak Salem, the first Kochi Jew to become an attorney, writes in his book titled Cochin Jew Town Synagogue: “When the Dutch withdrew from Malabar to Ceylon, [the] Portuguese attacked the Jews once again, plundered the street and houses and burnt the synagogue in 1661 or 1662. With the burning of the synagogue mots, their books and chronicle of events were also destroyed. The houses and the synagogues were repaired and rebuilt after the reappearance of the Dutch about 1665.”
The synagogue’s wrought-iron gates sport the Star of David. The building has white walls with a tiled roof. The inner courtyard features Hebrew-inscribed gravestones. The floor is paved with hand-painted porcelain tiles from China. Other notable features include gold and silver decorated Torah scrolls, an oriental carpet in front of the ark, two brass columns and two pulpits. Crystal chandeliers and brass and glass oil lamps hanging from the ceiling add to the beauty of the structure.
The synagogue is historically important as it was at the epicentre of a struggle within the Jewish community around 1927. The White Jews – or Paradesi Jews from Spain, Portugal and Netherlands – were considered the elite class and they enjoyed the right to worship as well as full membership at the synagogue. The Black Jews were the settlers from Kochi who were allowed to worship but were not given full membership. Then there were the Meshuchrarim, the community of freed slaves, who accompanied the Paradesi Jews when they came to India from Spain. They were not allowed to enter the synagogue and had no communal rights.
Abraham Barak Salem, who belonged to the Meshuchrarim community, launched a non-violent agitation against this discrimination based on skin colour, including a prayer boycott. It earned him the sobriquet Jewish Gandhi. He died in Mattancherry at the age of 85 in 1967.